Tao Lin > Quotes

“Do you sometimes look up from the computer and look around the room and know you are alone, I mean really know it, then feel scared ?”
― Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel

“There was an enjoyment to being alive, he felt, that because of an underlying meaninglessness–like how a person alone for too long cannot feel comfortable when with others; cannot neglect that underlying the feeling of belongingness is the certainty, really, of loneliness, and nothingness, and so experiences life in that hurried, worthless way one experiences a mistake–he could no longer get at.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“sad things are beautiful only from a distance
therefore you just want to get away from them
from a distance of one hundred and thirty years
....i'm going to distance myself until the world is beautiful”
― Tao Lin, this emotion was a little e-book

“You were one person alive and your brain was encased in a skull. There were other people out there. It took effort to be connected.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“On average, since the urge to kill myself isn't so strong that I actually kill myself, the world is worth living in.”
― Tao Lin, Taipei

“...one had to expect very little—almost nothing—from life, Aaron knew, one had to be grateful, not always trying to seize the days like some maniac of living, but to give oneself up, be seized by the days, the months and years, be taken up in the froth of sun and moon, some pale and smoothie-ed river-cloud of life, a long, drawn-out, gray sort of enlightenment, so that when it was time to die, one did not scream swear words and knock things down, did not make a scene, but went easily with understanding and tact, and quietly, in a lightly pummeled way, having been consoled–having allowed to be consoled–by the soft, generous, worthlessness of it all, having allowed to be massaged by the daily beating of life, instead of just beaten.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“Life, people learned, was not easy. Life was not cake. Life was not a carrot cake.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“i will learn how to love a person and then i will teach you and then we will know"

seen from a great enough distance i cannot be seen
i feel this as an extremely distinct sensation
of feeling like shit; the effect of small children
is that they use declarative sentences and then look at your face
with an expression that says, ‘you will never do enough
for the people you love’; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one is trying hard enough
the effect of this is an extremely shitty sensation
of being the only person alive; i have been alone for a very long time
it will take an extreme person to make me feel less alone
the effect of being alone for a very long time
is that i have been thinking very hard and learning
about mortality, loneliness, people, society, and love; i am afraid
that i am not learning fast enough; i can feel the universe expanding
and it feels like no one has ever tried hard enough; when i cried in your room
it was the effect of an extremely distinct sensation that ‘i am the only person
alive,’ ‘i have not learned enough,’ and ‘i can feel the universe expanding
and making things be further apart
and it feels like a declarative sentence
whose message is that we must try harder”
― Tao Lin

“The correct arrangement of words will make these bad feelings go away tonight.”
― Tao Lin

“Lately, they were always reassuring each other that nothing was wrong; and probably it was true—life wasn’t supposed to be incredible, after all. Life wasn’t some incredible movie. Life was all the movies, ever, happening at once. There were good ones, bad ones, some went straight to video.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“He used to think things like, This organic soymilk will make me healthy and that'll make my brain work better and that'll improve my writing. Also things like, The less I eat the less money I spend on publicly owned companies the less pain and suffering will exist in the world. Now he thinks things like, It is impossible to be happy. Why would anyone think that? ”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“loneliness can fly a helicopter through a cut-out shape
of a helicopter the same size as the helicopter
and that's it's only skill
and it isn't good enough
but it's still amazing.”
― Tao Lin, this emotion was a little e-book

“Patriotism is the belief that not all human lives are worth the same.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“As a child, she’d always had what she imagined were fascinating thoughts, but didn’t ever say them. Once, as a little girl, at recess, she thought that if she ran very fast at a pole and then caught it and swung quickly around, part of her would keep going, and she would become two girls.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“Moose had no friends that year. A lot of the time a moose would feel tired and lean against other moose. Only there wouldn't be moose there and the moose would fall.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“We have been sitting here all night bullshitting and we still don’t know what to do.”
― Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel

“A world without right or wrong was a world that did not want itself, anything other than itself, or anything not those two things, but that still wanted something. A world without right or wrong invited you over, complained about you, and gave you cookies. Don't leave, it said, and gave you a vegan cookie. It avoided eye contact, but touched your knee sometimes. It was the world without right or wrong. It didn't have any meaning. It just wanted a little meaning.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“Though if love was an animal, Garret knew, it would probably be the Loch Ness Monster. If it didn’t exist, that didn’t matter. People made models of it, put it in the water, and took photos. The hoax of it was good enough. The idea of it. Though some people feared it, wished it would just go away, had their lives insured against being eaten alive by it.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“does a society exist where it's become acceptable to wear 'helmets' enclosing one's entire head when in public to preempt social interaction”
― Tao Lin

“Matt would stare at Andrew for 10 minutes. It's depressing that people are different. Everyone should be one person, who should then kill itself in hand-to-hand combat.”
― Tao Lin

“Sometimes an alien would stand with a moose, not because of solidarity, but because of accidentally doing it.”
― Tao Lin, Eeeee Eee Eeee

“It sometimes seemed to him that for love to work, it had to be fair, that he should tell only half the joke, and she the other half. Otherwise, it would not be love, but something completely else–pity or entertainment, or stand-up comedy.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“Death is the end of the fear of death. [...] To avoid it we must not stop fearing it and so life is fear. Death is time because time allows us to move toward death which we fear at all times when alive. We move around and that is fear. Movement through space requires time. Without death there is no movement through space and no life and no fear. To be aware of death is to be alive is to fear is to move around in space and time toward death.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“that was bad; i shouldn't have done that

to prevent you from entering a catatonic state
i am going to maintain a calm facial expression
with crinkly eyes and an overall friendly demeanor
i believe in a human being that is not upset
i believe if you are working i should not be insane
or upset--why am i ever insane or upset and not working?
i vacuumed the entire house this morning
i cleaned the kitchen and the computer room
and i made you a meat helmet with computer paper
the opportunity for change exists in each moment, all moments are alone
and separate from other moments, and there are a limited number of moments
and the idea of change is a delusion of positive or negative thinking
your hands are covering your face
and your body moves like a statue
when i try to manipulate an appendage
if i could just get you to cry tears of joy one more time”
― Tao Lin, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy

“He wanted to hide by shrinking past zero, through the dot at the end of himself, to a negative size, into an otherworld, where he would find a place— in an enormous city, too large to know itself, or some slowly developing suburb— to be alone and carefully build a life in which he might be able to begin, at some point, to think about what to do about himself.”
― Tao Lin, Taipei

“It was a face that said, “Fuck the world,” but said it reluctantly, and tonelessly, and then apologized, said “Sorry,” but said all of this so shyly that no one heard, anyway, except for himself. A year ago, Uncle Larry went to the hospital with the flu, somehow fell into a coma, and, a few days later, died.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“When he heard laughter, before he could think or feel anything, his heart would already be beating like he’d sprinted twenty yards. As the beating slowly normalized he’d think of how his heart, unlike him, was safely contained, away from the world, behind bone and inside skin, held by muscles and arteries in its place, carefully off-center, as if to artfully assert itself as source and creator, having grown the chest to hide in and to muffle and absorb—and, later, after innovating the brain and face and limbs, to convert into productive behavior—its uncontrollable, indefensible, unexplainable, embarrassing squeezing of itself.”
― Tao Lin, Taipei

“When I'm talking to someone I think 'can I use this dialogue in a book,'" said Luis. "If the answer is no I try talking to someone else.”
― Tao Lin, Shoplifting from American Apparel

“People went up and down Sixth Avenue with the word motherfucker in their heads. They felt no emotions, had no sensation of life, love, or the pursuit of happiness, but only the knowledge of being stuck between a Thursday and a Saturday, air and things, this thought and the next, philosophy and action; birth, death, God, the devil, heaven, and hell. There was no escape, ever, was what people felt.”
― Tao Lin, Bed

“my favourite emotions include 'brief calmness
in good weather' and 'i am the only person alive”
― Tao Lin, Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy